None of us understood the dark secret of the blackboardsnor why the armillary sphere seemed so remote when we looked at it.We knew only that a circumference does not have to roundand that an eclipse of the moon confuses the flowersand speeds up the timing of birds.

None of us understood anything:not even why our fingers were made of India inkand the afternoon closed compasses only to have the dawn open books.We knew only that a straight line, if it likes, can be curved or brokenand that the wandering stars are children who don't know arithmetic.

… And the pans will already be Seeping the blue from the sea.Let me be, saltersA tlittle grain from the salina!How nice at dawnTo run the wagons,Full of salty snowToward the white houses!I quit being seaman, mother,To become salter.

The moon gropes its way across the plains, fords the rivers,penetrates the woods.It fleshes out the still warm mountains,runs into the heat from erect cities.It forges a shadow, slays a dark corner,drowns in shimmering rosesthe mystery of caves where no scent can be found.

The moon keeps moving, seeing, singing, going on and on without a pause.A sea is not a mattress where the body of a man can stretch out all by itself.A sea isn’t a shroud for an otherwise shining death.The moon keeps going; it soaks, sinks into, gullies out the beaches.It sets the calm green murmurs to rocking crazily.The standing carcass of a man sways for a moment, wavers,lurches forward - green - stays put - stiff.The moon takes note of its broken-down arms,its disapproving glare at a couple of cuddling fish.The moon sets fire to sunken cities where one can still hear(how enchanting!) the clear bells,where the last echoes of the surf still ripple over sexless breasts,over soft breasts some octopus has worshipped.

But the moon stays forever pure and dry.It comes from a sea that remains forever a box,a block whose limits no one, no one can measure,a sea that isn’t a hunk of rock glowing on top of a mountain.

The moon comes out and chases what once had been a skeleton,what once had been the blood vessels of a human being,once had been its resonant blood, its tuneful jail,its distinct waist that splits life in two,or its light head bobbing on the breeze, facing east.

But man doesn’t exist.Never has existed, never.But man doesn’t live, just as the day doesn’t live.But the moon makes up his furious metals.

Yes, I have desired you intensely.Why kiss your lips, if one knows death is near,if one knows that to love is merely to forget life,to close the eyes to the present darkin order to open them on a body's shining boundaries?

I don't want to read in books a truth which rises slowly like an ocean,I renounce that mirror mountains offer everywhere,naked rock where my face is reflectedcrossed by birds whose meaning I don't know.

I don't want to mirror rivers where fish ruddy with the flush of lifeattack the restraining banks of their desire,rivers from which prodigious voices rise in rebellion,portents I don't understand strewn among the reeds.

No, I refuse; I decline to swallow that dust, that pitiful earth, that eroded sand,that certainty of life as long as flesh receives the Sacramentwhen it knows that the world and this bodyspin like that portent the celestial eye doesn't understand.

No, I refuse to cry out, raise my voice,fling it out like that stone which smashes itself against the forehead,breaking the windows of that monstrous heavenbehind which no one heeds the murmur of life.

I want to live, to live like the stubborn grass,like the north wind or snow, like the watchful coal,like the future of an as yet unborn son,like the embrace of lovers when the moon is aware of them.

I am the music the world makes in its mysterious flightbeneath the tails of numerous comets,innocent bird with blood on its wingsthat dies in a despairing breast.

I am destiny summoning everyone who loves,unique sea to which all loving radii will comewhich seek its centre, fluted on the circumferencethat spins like the murmurous and absolute rose.

I am the horse kindling its mane against the naked wind,I am the lion tormented by its virility,the timid gazelle at the neutral river's edge,the destructive tiger that tyrannises the jungle,the tiny beetle that also shines by day.

No one can be unaware of the living presence,of what is valid in the face of hostile clamour,that displays its transparent breast like a window,yet in spite of its transparency will never be glass,because if you approach your hands, you will feel the blood.

Emblems mean nothing nor vain words that are but breaths of air. What matters is the echo of what I heard and listen to. Your voice, though dead lives, as I who pass here still find you.

You were more consistent, more lasting, not because I kissed you, nor because with you, firm, I held fast to existence. Rather because like the sea after invading the sand deepens, fearful. In greens or in foam the sea, joyful, grows distant. As it ebbed and flowed, you never return.

Perhaps because, rolled on an endless shore, I could not find you. The traces of your foam, when the water recedes, remain along the edges.

I only find edges. Only the fine edge of a voice that remains in me. Like a bit of seaweed your kisses. Magical in the light, then they turn lifeless.

But it is sadder than that, much, much sadder.Sad as a branch letting its fruit fall for no one.Sadder, much sadder. Like the mistthe dead fruit breathes out from the ground.Like that hand that rises from the corpse lying in stateand merely wants to touch the lamps,the grieving smile, the night speechless and velvet.Luminous night above the corpse stretched out without its soul.The soul outside, soul outside the body, swoopingwith such delicacy over the shape sad and abandoned.Soul of soft mist, held floatingabove its former lover, the defenseless and palebody, which grows colder as the night goes on,it remains silent, alone, empty in a gentle way.Soul of love that watches and hesitatesto free itself, but finally leaves, gentle and cold.

I will die because I am plunging in, because I want to die,because I want to live inside the fire, for mine is not this outer airbut heated breath burning at my approachand gilding my lips within its depths.

Let me gaze and gaze, tinged with love,my face flushed by your purple life,let me gaze at the deep tumult of your corewhere I will die and forever relinquish living.

I want love or death, I want to die completely,I want to be you, your blood, the roaring lavabathing your beautiful extremitieswhile sensing in its confinement life's glorious limits.

This kiss on your lips like a slow thorn,like a flown-away sea made into a mirror,like a wing's luster,is still a pair of hands, a stroking of your rustling hair,a crackling of avenging light,light or death-dealing sword poised threatening above my neck,but never able to destroy this world's unity.

Arrival of light reposing on our foreheads,Where do you arrive from, where do you come from, loving formI feel breathing,feel like a breast enfolding a melody,feel like the sound of angelic harps,nearly transparent now like murmuring worlds?

Where do you come from, celestial gown in shining beam figurecaressing a forehead alive and suffering, and loving like all that lives?;where from, you who seem as ready to be the memory of a fire glowing like a branding iron,as to settle calmly on the weary being of an understanding head?

Your unlamenting touch, your smiling arrival like lips from above,your secret's whisper in the waiting earwounds or sets to dreaming like pronouncing a nameonly gleaming lips can speak.Contemplating this very moment the tiny delicate animals spinning round across the earth,bathed by your presence or your soundless scale,revealed to their existence, protected by a silencebroken only by many bloods throbbing.

Watching this skin of ours, our body visiblebecause you reveal it, light whose sender is unknown to me,light still arriving as though lips had spoken you,in the form of teeth or an entreated kiss,with a warmth of skin still loving us.

Joyful kiss, carefree dove,whiteness between our hands, sun or cloud;heart not trying to fly because warmth is enough,a wing combed by lips already alive is enough.

Day can be felt toward the outside; only love exists.You and I feel being born on our mouths what is not alive,what an indestructible kiss is when mouths are wings,wings smothering us while our eyes are closing,while golden light remains inside our eyelids.

Come, come flee with me like love in silence; life like the warmth of everyone alone,of soft music quivering beneath our feet,unique flying world, with light from a living star,like one body or two souls, like a final bird.